Contemporary theories of democracy seem to be characterized, among other things, by the widespread confidence that – given the right combination of individual rights, institutions and procedures – democratic systems provide a sufficient framework for identifying and addressing injustices. So some extent, this confidence is the result of a lesson from history: Looking back at –ultimatively successful – emancipatory struggles (like the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement, etc.), the idea is to make sure that people who perceive their situation within the political order as unjust can organize themselves into political movements, make their claims heard and thus bring the respective injustice to the attention of the wider democratic public – which could then decide on legislation addressing and removing them. Interestingly, though, the predominant ‘solution’ offered by theories of democracy (as well as theories of justice) is to identify the individual rights, political institutions and procedures most likely to enable (or ‘empower’) those subjected to injustice to effectively make themselves heard. As long as people have a guaranteed ‘right to justification’ (Rainer Forst) or the legal-institutional means for contesting public policies (Philip Pettit), or so this position might be summarized with reference to two influential theories, we can be confident that injustices won’t go unnoticed – or not for long, anyway.
In my contribution I will subject this position to a critical assessment and take a look at how well such legal-institutional safeguards against injustices perform in practice. In particular, I argue that in modern societies there are likely to be a number of circumstances (including the effects of existing injustices) due to which people might still be unable to make themselves heard. If this is the case, yet we still think that injustices should be put on the political agenda by those suffering from them, or so I argue, we have reason to think about whether we might need additional safeguards – beyond the legal-institutional framework. As I go on to suggest, one such safeguard, and in fact maybe the most important one, is a concept, which has traditionally been closely connected to the idea of emancipation, but which contemporary theories of democracy and justice somehow have lost sight of: solidarity.
